Games and Experience

Hey, so considering what my future job will be, I thought that it would be worthwhile to start putting some of my thoughts involving video games down on “paper.” These posts will be mostly drawn from my experiences with a particular game, so they most likely won’t have any links for references.

So with all of that precursor junk out the way let’s get into it. The other day I had the absolute pleasure to play a game called Journey. I know that it has been out for 2 years, but up until this point I haven’t had access to either a PS3 or a copy of the game. But I recently got access to both of those things and so I finally played Journey. I had already seen a playthrough, so I knew just how short it was. So having set aside the two hours I knew it would take to complete. I began my Journey (heh see what I did there?).

I won’t really talk much about the game because I feel that what it contained wasn’t as important as what I got out of it. That may sound harsh but let me explain. If you look at Journey from a purely mechanical standpoint it is so bare bones to the point of almost not being a game. You play as a piece of cloth walking in a desert. But even with that few mechanics Journey has managed to make its way into it’s place as one of my favorite games of all time. This is bizarre for me because in my mind mechanics has always and I mean always trumped story. Because of this I have heavily enjoyed games like Super Meat Boy, Spelunky, Rayman Origins/Legends, and Hotline Miami. Those games may have story but it is either silly to the point of uselessness or there is none to speak of.

So that begs the question why did enjoy Journey so much? I have a couple theories as to why. My biggest one is that the ambiance and the atmosphere of the game was so cohesive and beautiful that any other shortcomings fell to the wayside. My other one is that this game was just so minimalistic compared to other games that I